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16 month-old bug continues to crash Flash

by TJ Luoma Feb 6th 2010 at 4:30PM

Matthew Dempsky has discovered a bug which will crash the Flash player on every supported platform. That might not seem like a huge deal, except that he discovered this bug in September of 2008 and has reported it to Adobe, which hasn't fixed it yet.

16 months later.

If you'd like to test it for yourself, make sure there's nothing important open in your browser window and head to http://flashcrash.dempsky.org/.

In Safari and Google Chrome, this crashes the plugin but not the browser. It took Firefox 3.6 down entirely.

Why would Matthew post such a page? Isn't that reckless? Well, he explains on that page:
"Regarding crashing, I can tell you that we don't ship Flash with any known crash bugs, and if there was such a widespread problem historically Flash could not have achieved its wide use today," Lynch wrote. "Addressing crash issues is a top priority in the engineering team, and currently there are open reports we are researching in Flash Player 10." (Source: PC Mag, "Adobe Defends Flash, Calls Apple Uncooperative")

He goes on to say:

This page exploits a bug that I reported to Adobe in September 2008, and has affected every release of Flash on every platform since then. Despite numerous email exchanges with the Flash product manager about the bug, the bug report being hidden from the public for "security" reasons, and [although] Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch's claims otherwise, it continues to be an issue.

...I'm not an Apple fan boy out to prove Steve Jobs right in Apple's decision not to support Flash on the iPhone / iPad. Instead, I'm just a software engineer who at one time had to deal with Adobe's sorry excuse for a development platform and made an earnest effort on several occasions at helping them improve it for everyone. (This issue is merely the tip of the iceberg of ridiculous bugs and random backwards and forwards incompatibilities known as Adobe's Flash Player plug-in.) After trying to work with them to fix this issue and experiencing nothing but frustration, I just don't give a damn anymore.

Adobe has been able to rest on its laurels with Flash, because it was a de facto standard. Now that the platform is being left behind by new mobile devices and computing metaphors, Adobe is making an appeal to the public that Flash isn't that bad.

Adobe's been able to do much the same with Photoshop and CS4. Even people who love the apps and use them every day have learned to live with the crashes and other problems. Adobe seemed not to be in too much of a rush to get Snow Leopard compatible versions out. Ditto for when Apple switched to Intel.

I'm amazed by people who continue to defend Flash, including those who believe that alternatives will have a chance if web developers weren't pushed to start using newer alternatives like H.264 and HTML 5. (No, I'm not saying H.264/HTML 5 is a drop-in replacement for Flash, and I'm not even going to mention SVG.)

If we all went with the "de facto standard" we'd be using Internet Explorer 6 on Windows. Actually, we'd probably be using Internet Explorer 4.

No doubt that Flash has done some great things. At one time, it was cutting edge stuff. Now it's a dull butter knife.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't remind you about ClickToFlash which I've reviewed previously.

(Hat tip to Craig Hockenberry and Mike Damm for bringing this story to our attention.)



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Matthew Dempsky has discovered a bug which will crash the Flash player on every supported platform. That might not seem like a huge deal,...
 

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zik

this http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/
take 50% of me CPU in Chrome
flash would take less

HTML 5 isnt bater then flash
you cant make a dynamic thing with out
a use of CPU in the web yet
flash isnt HTML
HTML load once

and the HTML 5 video is not good
in youtube there is HTML 5 video player
and the quality is so bad
you dont have HD

February 20 2010 at 5:07 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matthew Fabb

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Emmy Huang, who is Product Manager for Adobe Flash Player, blog posting on this bug:
http://blogs.adobe.com/emmy/archives/2010/02/flash_bug_repor.html
She apologies for it slipping through the cracks and that this should have never have happened. Also the bug has since been fixed in the current Flash Player 10.1 beta.

February 09 2010 at 10:16 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dmitry Yakhnov

Why someone in Apple decide for me should I have Flash or not?
It is my choice what to install or uninstall.

February 08 2010 at 10:49 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sachax

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-677

It says the Bug has been fixed in 10.1.51.66

February 08 2010 at 10:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
miike

I downloaded the Flash 10.1 beta, installed it and opened Safari4.04, and darn if it actually did NOT crash after going to flashcrash.dempsky.org. Previously only Opera 6 did not crash (I wanted to read the info on the page). I guess I guess after 2-3 years Adobe is actually doing something. Still, the 10.1 download is 12.6MB... probably because it is still a beta, but, darn I remember I used to have PageMaker and some PageMaker files on a single 800k floppy disk for my Mac Plus....

February 08 2010 at 4:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jonathan

you act like 1. they create their own ads, and 2. these bloggers have any control over ads at all. if you didnt notice the bottom of the page that says this website is owned by AOL Weblogs Inc. then read it. duh.

stop acting like they are profiting from flash. those ads can be designed in a number of formats, but the designers are the ones who choose to use the crap language of flash. they are just implemented by the big brother that runs the site. not the blog posters. get outta here already.

February 08 2010 at 11:10 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rafa

Let's try to keep focus here.

Has anybody read the conditions that cause the problem?. All companies, Adobe included, prioritize bug fixing based on the kind of error being reported. The conditions that need to be met for this bug to occur in real world are not common at all so considering the ton of other bugs Adobe has in hands I think it's normal they prioritize it.

By the way, the 6 months old bug in iPhoneOS regarding smart playlists handling that makes them pretty useless in iPhone and iPod touch is still not fixed by Apple as per the recent 3.1.3 release.

BTW, it didn't crash running latest Flash+Chrome builds on me neither...

February 08 2010 at 4:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Rafa's comment
MagicFeather

My smart playlists seem to be working correctly now. Latest iTunes / iphone updates.

February 08 2010 at 8:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ryu2010

Alex, where have your brains gone? It's beta because they are making sure that as much as possible issues are resolved. I won't mind that they keep it beta as long as they make sure that the new features are stable for deployment.

I am no rabid mac fanboi, I bought my Mac so it can serve --if I want Flash I will install it and remove it when I please to do so. I don't want people like Steve Jobs or Ivan P 91 censoring my own will.

I am no Ivan P91 who lives to serve his computer---"oh, my Mac, excuse me, I have to go pee". Oh my precious Mac please forgive me I have not wiped your keyboard in 3 hours". So STUPID.

February 08 2010 at 1:55 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
ryu2010

The point of the whole article is that --is Adobe too lazy to fix the bug. The answer is no! It i not crash my FF 3.6--used flash 10.1 beta 2. If that continues, I won't mind using it on my Mac an it never crashes my PC.

I am open to any standards or tool-- it's so idiotic to say html 5 is a cure all or a replacement . I believe those tools will compliment each other. I saw the demos--it fired up my CPU usage--if that is the case--HTML 5 should also be banned. TOM, try using HTML, jQuery, Ajax to create RIAs--it's more labor intensive and takes too much time which is a no-no.

February 08 2010 at 1:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
level09

Flash is ActiveX control = a program you run on the browser. of course you can always write some malicious code to crash it ..
that doesn't mean that Flash itself is buggy . Apple better go and fix their IMac display flickering problems instead of blaming a technology that is used by biggest name companies in the world (Oracle uses flex also btw).

flash is revolution and whoever tried developing AS3 apps knows this fact.

HTML5 can never compete with Flash.

February 08 2010 at 1:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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